Bits and Bobs

Recently at the Curwen I had the chance to visit next door to view some of Mark Hearld's original prints; what fun!

 As well as showing us Mark's work, Jenny was explaining how the separations are done for a lithograph. That day Carrie Ackroyd was working with Michael Papworth on her latest prints. I love her work and met her at Art in Action 2 years ago, she kindly said I could take a photo.

Meanwhile, demolition is nearly complete at the conference centre.

My Open studio weekends were interesting as usual, I had similiar visitor numbers to last year. Tiring but good fun!

All clean, tidy and ready for visitors.

I was very flattered when a woman thought I had printed these lovely vintage curtains.... a recent purchase, a design called Maquis by Lucienne Day. In the winter, when I imagine I may have more time, I will unpick them, wash and remake with  interlining and lining. 

Print day at the Curwen

It's over a month since I wrote a post; I've had a really uncreative period and am hoping with Spring blossoming all around me my creativity will too! My March print day with my group at the Curwen was fun as usual, here are the rest of the group; there are 6 of us.

Maria and Kate, both screen printing Queens......

I only managed to get a photo of Jacque as she was packing up.....

Mike talking to Sue Jones, our tutor, and Jenny in the background....

and Jenny working out on the etching press!

I played around with some mono prints using fabrics and stencils of cups and jugs. Basically you ink up your metal plate and plonk/carefully place bits of fabric/stencilson before putting though the etching press using slightly damp paper; you can over print, take a pale 'ghost' print etc. and of course anything you end up with is unique.

    I chose a pinky red and grey inks.......

just before lifting the stencils off a print.... 

and a print using the inky stencils and scrim, shame the jug isn't clearer but it was fun playing around.

I ended up with 2 or 3 prints I will mount and/or frame.....



A jug and cups series I think, and a few prints to work on next time....like this one...

and I ended up with some scrim and stencils that I can use for a collage maybe?......

all good fun!

Christmas Open Studio

I had a lovely weekend welcoming people to my Open Studio event. The mulled wine went down well, especially the non-alcoholic version, made from red grape juice, orange juice, brown sugar, grated ginger and cloves and a cinnamon stick. It had oranges and lemons cut up and thrown in as well; I was sipping away most of the day, with no ill effects afterwards!! I thoroughly enjoyed talking about my work -much of the time us artists are working on our own; it's great to share with other people.

I've never had a picture of me at my OS, Gina took this one and below we have Gina and her Mum.

On Saturday December 3rd I will be at Ashwell Christmas Fair, held in the beautiful church. There's always a lovely Christmassy feel to this fair and being local you see lots of people you know, so a warm, friendly atmosphere.

I am currently working on a lino cut to commemorate my grandson's birth. He is now 18 months old so a little late but I recently took a commission to create a lino cut for a child's christening, on their 1st birthday and thought I must create a print for Barney.

Here's the start of the design and work in progress.....

I've a printing day booked at the Curwen in December, at present I'm having withdrawal symptoms .. no printing for weeks!!

Alison Hullyer, a Cambridge artist, printmaker and illustrator now has a blog as well as her website - do take a look at her lovely, distinctive work. I first met Alison at her Open Studio in 2010, when I had just started my printmaking journey. When I try to add a link to Alison's blog, my post won't save, so do look her up!

A morning in Saffron Walden and good news.

On Friday I spent some time with Helen at the Church Street Gallery in Saffron Walden showing her some of my prints. I'm glad to say she liked my work and chose several prints to sell at the gallery. I've always loved Saffron Walden and visited the gallery a few times, so it's exciting to have my work there. Thankyou for the coffee Helen and the tweet on Twitter!!

http://www.church-street-gallery.co.uk/

 I then went to the Fry Gallery to view Chloe Cheese's exhibition, I love the spontaneous nature of her work. I'm taking a course with her at the Curwen next week.

Curwen summer school

What a fun week at the Curwen, attending their summer school. Monday was spent on a drawing day with Chloe Cheese, starting with Chloe showing some of her lovely work and talking about her inspiration.

Chloe is the daughter of Bernard Cheese and Sheila Robinson, both artists who lived in, and were part of the Gt. Bardfield groups of artists.

Chloe asked us to do 5 minute sketches of an object with certain types of printing in mind. Lots of interesting things to draw!

My pencil sketches haven't photographed well as they were light lines. Then we spent longer on one object using colour as well, I chose a fabulous shaped piece of flint.

This was sketched and painted using Brusho powder paints. I hadn't painted for ages so it was fun. Later we went outside and sketched anything we liked. There are lots of interesting sculptures in the grounds, I took lots of photos.

I loved this one.... and this... Chilford has it's own vineyard.

On the 2nd day John Mills, sculptor, spent the morning with us sharing his prints and telling us how he became an artist, which was very interesting. A modest and extremely talented person.

We spent the afternoon on drypoint, working on acetate. I printed these jugs.



My welsh gaudy jug and a modern design...

This one has chine colle on.

They both need some sort of background printed round them.....I'm doing some open access days at the Curwen next week, goody!! 



Curwen exhibition

I am back online after weeks without my laptop, which sadly crashed completely, no hope of resurrection! So here I am on brand new laptop, getting used to it and catching up on everything. All because I have a wonderful IT guru, my son in law Mark who set up my new laptop and is always patient with his Mum in law!!

So much has happened in the last month. My printmaking course has ended and we held our end of course exhibition at the Curwen on July 12th. The day before was hectic,cleaning the floor!!! and setting up our boards.

 My boards are nearly ready.

On the Tuesday it was assessment time with Stanley Jones and Chloe Cheese, we each had half an hour with them to show and discuss our work. It was a very positive and helpful experience although slightly nerve wracking; eminent printmakers with years of experience looking at my prints!! At the end of the day we were presented with our cerificates; I passed The Advanced Printmakers Certificate with merit, that was exciting!

The evening exhibition was a big success, with lots of visitors.

including my grandson and daughter....

........of course, he really enjoyed all the prints..........an art lover in the making!!

Actually, he was more interested in crawling around, a new skill he had just discovered!!



Chaos reigns - Open Studio soon!

I love working in my studio, it's a lovely room that was a large dining room when I bought this house. In those days I made soft furnishings for clients and it was ideal for laying out the enormous curtains I was making. When I returned to teaching it reverted to being a dining room plus teaching prep. place. On my retirement - hooray!! I at last had time for my art so it became my studio, which soon seemed too small. I decided to make it bigger by using the store room behind it, which involved knocking down a wall! Here it is before the building work, this was my Open Studio Christmas 09.

The wall has been knocked down!! It was great to see the extra space I would have, with the window and the door to the garden. 

But what a mess! this was my 3rd phase of building work last year, all dovetailed round my open studio events by my builder Matt. It was all worth it!!

How big it looks with not much in!!

Fantastic to get my books organised.

So that's how my studio came into being. Back to a different sort of chaos!!

I even had help one morning from my grandson Barney, just 1 year old!

With Barney starting to crawl, it will be fun in my studio!!

Cambridge Open Studios happens over 4 weekends in July. I am opening for 3 weekends, the 1st one July 2nd and 3rd. I've tried to get ready early as I'm also preparing for my end of course exhibition in July. Another day at the Curwen tomorrow, week 8 which is a personal development day. I must sort out what I'm going to do. I'm so tired I nearly fell asleep watching the tennis earlier!!

Week 6 at the Curwen

This was another day on photo screenprinting. First a cup cake print from last week.

This is quite appropriate, as Sue Jones our tutor has nick named us the cake group - we do seem to need cake and sweets to keep our energy levels up!!

I played around with different colours:

I don't know what got in that photo!! I love screen printing, it's fast once all the preparation of the screen is done and it's great trying out different colour combinations. Another fun day!! Such fun that I sneaked in on an extra day at the weekend - Open Access and more photo screen.

This is my 'tea' image, drawn on truegrain like the cup cake print. I printed it in some great colours.

              I also printed some plain backgrounds on another screen to overprint next week. It was an interesting day with some stone lithography going on, which I'd never seen before. I find printmaking fascinating, with all the different processes that are involved.